Graphene, the strongest material on earth, now produced from cookies, roaches and dog feces

Graphene is a material made of carbon. It is a particularly interesting material because in graphene, carbon manages to arrange itself in a sheet just one atom thick (see pic on the left). The material is so thin, that three million sheets of graphene on top of each other would be just 1mm thick. This one-atom thick sheet, densely packed in a honeycomb lattice, has excellent electrical, mechanical and thermal properties that make it the strongest material on earth, an improvement upon and a possible replacement for silicon, and the most conductive material known to man.

In 2004, physicists at the University of Manchester and the Institute for Microelectronics Technology, Chernogolovka, Russia, first isolated individual graphene planes by exfoliating graphite (i.e. the material used for pencils) using adhesive tape. Since 2009 it has been described as the strongest material on earth, 200 times stronger than steel. In 2010, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”.

It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.

See through: Researchers have created a flexible graphene sheet with silver electrodes printed on it (top) that can be used as a touch screen when connected to control software on a computer (bottom). Credit: Byung Hee Hong, SKKU.

As for uses? It can be used for making up new materials and electronic devices. Sort of like plastics are used nowadays but with an extra touch of technology. It could be used for transparent electronics that are stronger, cheaper, and more flexible such as shown on the right. Professor Tour of Rice University said teasingly:

You could theoretically roll up your iPhone and stick it behind your ear like a pencil.

Graphene is usually made up from graphite. But as the demand for cheap and fast large-scale graphene production becomes imminent, it quickly became clear that making graphene by splitting graphite crystals using adhesive tape, had no future.

Now a team of researchers led by Prof Tour, managed at to grow graphene directly on the backside of a copper foil at 1050°C, using six easily obtained, low or negatively valued raw carbon-containing materials used without pre-purification (cookies, chocolate, grass, plastics, roaches, and dog feces). Read the full paper here. Thanks to Anastassia for the story!

Worst comes to worst you just might end up using up that pizza from last night to get a new rollable iPhone. And think twice before you scold your dog again for doing a #2 on the carpet!